Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior
A Companion to The Way of the Peaceful Warrior
B Y   D A N   M I L L M A N

Do not be a magician; be magic.
- Leonard Cohen

The Shaman's Reality

Among the chameleon roles played by Socrates (from stern taskmaster to humorous eccentric), he excelled in playing the shaman - one who travels in the shadow lands, a wayfarer in the depths of the subconscious mind. The shaman divines meanings and messages from the whispers of the natural world and can translate them for others. In that capacity, Soc made much of omens and signs from nature, and the shifting winds spoke to him of coming changes in my life.

Some say that all of this is mere superstition - a play of the mind, a throwback to primitive cultures. But I believe that ancient peoples may hold valuable perspectives for modern lives cut off from primal rhythms that speak to the cells of our bodies.

All young children are shamans, but they wander in dreamscapes they do not understand. In contrast, trained intuitives use oracular tools such as astrological signs, tarot cards, Nordic runes, or other devices as conscious ways to focus their sight, just as shamans use the natural world as their oracle. Nature whispers secrets to the shaman when others hear only the wind.

Accepting Change

When Socrates quoted that old Confucian proverb, he meant that the ignorant are like stones and the wise are like water. Stones do not change; they only break or wear down over time. Yet water remains the same as it adapts perfectly to the shape of its container; even when moving from ice to liquid to gas, its essential nature remains.

The wise among us retain their balance while surfing the waves of change; they navigate effortlessly down even the most powerful rivers. They represent the still center of the raging hurricane.

Those of us who are unhappy with our lives may wish for a change in our environment or in the people around us. But when life is good (or sometimes even not so good), we often resist change due to fear of the unknown. We also resist the natural changes brought by passing years. (Never mind aging gracefully; we don't want to age at all!) But change is one of the House Rules that govern all of life.

Despite all our hopes and efforts and strategies, change is indeed the only constant. Consider this quotation by Lewis Carroll from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:

Eventually we all learn the inevitability of change and the wisdom of flexibility and acceptance, since nothing stays the same. Until then, we resist, and such resistance creates stress, suffering, and pain.

But pain generates learning. We've all experienced physical, emotional, and mental pain - and many times adversity has left us a little stronger, wiser, and more compassionate. As the existential writer Albert Camus wrote, "In the midst of winter I discovered within me an invincible summer." Our souls make the greatest strides in the face of difficulty: a bankruptcy, a divorce, an illness, an injury, a death in the family. Such challenges forge our characters and temper our spirits - for our highest good and learning.

Opening the Doors of Perception

The next day was full of classes and full of professors babbling words that had no meaning or relevance for me. In History 101, Watson lectured on how Churchill's political instincts had affected the war. I stopped taking notes. I was too busy taking in the colors and textures of the room, feeling the energies of the people around me. The sounds of my professors' voices were far more interesting than the concepts they conveyed.

This incident from the book and a similar scene in the Peaceful Warrior movie depict Socrates transmitting some sort of energy to heighten my perceptions and open circuits to stimulate a psychedelic effect. Did Socrates have an implied right to do what he did? Should he have asked permission first? How could he presume to know what was best for my evolution? Did he cross boundaries and interfere with my process, or enhance it?

By this time in the narrative, Socrates and I had developed a student-mentor relationship. Just as psychotherapists might use hypnosis or other methods from their toolbox of techniques, Soc did the same. Only his toolbox was something special, based on his training, some of which I describe in The Journeys of Socrates.

I related this incident in Way of the Peaceful Warrior to draw a distinction between the different kinds of knowledge - academic concepts versus practical wisdom based upon direct experience. Science and reason reflect the left brain; mysticism is the domain of the right brain. The peaceful warrior doesn't choose between the two, but integrates both.

Socrates helped to clear my head of abstract academic concepts, and to develop a more direct relationship with reality. Previous to this time, I perceived the world through a veil of thoughts and recycled impressions. Socrates helped me to hit the refresh button and empty the cache in my brain. My world came alive once again; a distorted, black-and-white existence came into focus and turned to color.

Transcending Conventional Agreements

In this snippet of dialogue between Susie and me, Susie represents the familiar, agreed-upon conventional reality most of us find so comfortable - the consolations and pleasures of food and sex and entertainment - diversions to keep the mind busy as we live typical lives filled with news, weather reports, and sports.

Seduced by the siren call of being a regular guy, of fitting in, I felt the familiar urge to return to agreed-upon social ideas - to fall back to sleep and abandon my foolish search for something more.

But after my experiences with Socrates, I found I couldn't go back, as much as I might have wanted to. And even as I numbly agreed with Susie that the lecture was "great," I realized I didn't believe it - not anymore. Of course, there's nothing wrong with going to college or attending informative lectures about history, philosophy, or any other area of human knowledge. It's just that after what I had experienced, mere information felt flat and dry and two-dimensional. I knew what real "higher education" meant, because I had found it in the form of an unlikely old gas station mechanic who happened to be awake. Thus, as a result of Soc's intervention, I felt a growing gap between the conventional world and the transcendent.

The Darkness before the Dawn

As my question to Socrates implied, I had expected a payoff for my efforts in going through his wringer. Things were supposed to feel better, but it seemed as if I was only getting worse. This phenomenon of things seeming to get worse before they get better is common, even necessary, and it doesn't occur just in the arena of spiritual practice. We experience this disillusioning perception in any process that involves growth or progress in a high-skill activity - whether sports or music or martial arts training.

When I first began studying aikido, my sensei, or instructor, would keep reminding me to relax. I found this frustrating, because I thought I was relaxing - but in light of my instructor's reminders, it seemed I was getting more tense than ever. My standards had gone up, as had my awareness of the problem: tension. But with my depressing and growing awareness of the tension came the possibility of truly relaxing. Awareness of the problem is the beginning of the solution.

Like an airplane rising up through the clouds, we often experience turbulence as our awareness rises to a new level. We realize what is possible, we raise our sights and standards, and we see ourselves more clearly. Often it appears darkest before the dawn - even within the human psyche.

Owning the Power of Choice

A childlike part of me wanted a wise teacher, but the adolescent in me rebelled. Pulled between "trusting my teacher" and "trusting myself," I repeated my concern about Soc "telling me how to live," since only I knew what was best for me.

Socrates had no interest in debating this, so he reminded me that I was not a captive audience: I could leave at any time. This realization helped me stop whining and resisting and begin to take responsibility for my choices. I was not Soc's pawn or victim; I was choosing the experience.

If we compare our lives to a movie, there are times - maybe even lifetimes - when we view ourselves as bit players or stand-ins, waiting for a person or circumstance to dictate what we should do next. We don't act; we only react. I needed the reminder that I could become the director, screenwriter, and star of my movie - my life. We can transform our lives by playing a bigger role.

As peaceful warriors, as mature human beings, we trust life unfolding and see spirit working in and through the people and circumstances in our lives, in the ups and downs, in friends and adversaries. We find wisdom all around us, but we weigh all that we learn, even from trusted teachers, against the counsel of our own hearts.

The Invisible Path of Awareness

The path of personal evolution isn't showy; no glowing signs identify an evolved being. Such a person may behave in quiet, ordinary ways, or speak with enthusiasm and passion, playing whatever role is called for in the moment. The peaceful warrior is invisible to all but those who can recognize a certain twinkle in the eye, a sense of energy, clarity, and balance. This sense of discernment develops over time as a natural result of inner work. As I came to understand the nature of my own mind and heart, I came to see the light in the minds and hearts of (so-called) others.

Trust in God but Tie Your Camel

Should we allow ourselves to be tied to a chair by a teacher or anyone else? Maybe yes, maybe no - it all depends upon the level of trust established. (If the tying up is done by a stranger on a first date, I wouldn't advise it.) By this point in my student-mentor relationship with Socrates, I was willing to take that risk. I now view Soc's action as a bit of showmanship on his part - he knew how to make an impression, as I've already noted.

As Soc sent me into unknown territory, it felt as if I was about to parachute from an airplane for the first time - I knew it would probably be okay, but it required a leap into the void, an act of faith.

Flights of Imagination

Many people have asked me about the inner journeys generated by Socrates as he laid his hands on my temples. These visionary experiences were in one sense fictional, but in another sense authentic.

As I've mentioned earlier, Socrates did not grab me by the head and generate such experiences. But I did experience such journeys within that mysterious realm we casually call "imagination."

Some people dismiss certain experiences with the phrase "Oh, that's just your imagination," yet Albert Einstein is often quoted as saying, "Imagination is more powerful than knowledge." Why would a brilliant scientist posit such an idea? Perhaps he recognized that all great discoveries come from the human imagination, only later to be tested by the methods of science. Imagination, the source of creativity, is also the bridge to clairvoyant sight. What begin as "flights of fancy" can later tap into subtle cues, signs, and messages from the subconscious, helping us access our deepest intuition.

The visions I described in Way of the Peaceful Warrior flowed from my imagination and took on their own reality in my mind, and in yours as you read the words. They became part of our shared experience.

Athletes, musicians, and other performance artists can rehearse and train by imagining themselves accomplishing desired skills. We can cultivate our children's imaginations by reading to them, telling them stories, and encouraging them to tell us stories as well. Those of us with vivid imaginations can pack many lifetimes into one.

When imagination runs wild, in the form of mental illness or hallucinations, we suffer its effects. But if we fully utilize creative imagination - if we harness its visionary powers in the style of mystics and shamans of every culture - we can roam anywhere in the universe, enriching our lives and deepening our experience, freeing ourselves from the limitations of our bodies and our physical senses, and even from time and space. Thus, we use imagination without being seduced by it.

Of course, we also need to ground our imagination in experience, in reality: Making a journey to the jungles of the Amazon is real; imagining that journey is not. Yet dreaming it is far better than never making any journey at all. Flights of fancy reflect one of our greatest human gifts. Then we must return to earth. As naturalist-author Osa Johnson wrote, "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. Now put foundations under them."

A Doorway Opens

Soc's enigmatic words reminded me that there was more than one kind of reality and called me to move beyond my everyday consciousness. But this excerpt also points to a mysterious phenomenon I've never revealed before.

I've often been asked what inspired me to write Way of the Peaceful Warrior - as if I had sat down one day and penned the entire book. In reality, the pace and progress of my writing varied considerably over a ten-year period, culminating in an intense effort as I wrote the final draft reframed around my life story. But it all began with a single holographic image that appeared, quite at random, in a moment of reverie. That image was the vision of a stadium seen from a great height, so that the people gathered below appeared as a multicolored array of shimmering dots, as in a pointillist painting.

That odd vision, which appeared as I sat in my office in Philips Gymnasium at Oberlin College, provided a sort of entry point to all that was to follow. The contents of Way of the Peaceful Warrior took shape over time, as I began to scribble down notes around that vision and the old man I'd met years before. It was an image so vivid that it stayed imprinted in my memory for many years. The creative process can be as mysterious as that.

Reading Minds

I once asked Socrates if I could learn to read people's minds. He turned to me, raised a bushy white eyebrow, and said, "First you'd better learn to read your own." In other words, until I could clearly see the nature of my own thoughts - see through the filter of my beliefs, associations, and interpretations - I wouldn't be able to perceive anyone or anything else with much clarity.

The higher purpose of this brief dialogue between us was not an invitation to psychic powers or parlor tricks, but a call to explore the nature of mind. By knowing my own mind, I might better empathize with and sense the thoughts and feelings of others.

This power of empathy enables us to connect with others on deeper levels, to become better writers, friends, and human beings - and mature peaceful warriors.

Dynamic Meditation

This insight about mind and movement is one of the most important we can realize - it is the foundation of all forms of moving meditation, from the Zen practice of kinhin, or walking meditation, to judo or aikido or any active way or path. Many of the Japanese words associated with martial arts end with -do, which means "way" or "path." In fact, the term dojo means "school of the way," where skills are practiced not as an end in themselves but as a means to personal insight and evolution (not merely winning a contest).

Daily life is not lived in a cross-legged posture. Eventually we open our eyes and get on with the day. Thus, sitting meditation is a good beginning, enhanced by moving meditation, which serves as a bridge into everyday life.

In the moment of truth - as we perform our skills in front of an audience, or take a test, or practice any movement skill - our attention rests in the body, on the movement, so our movement becomes our mantra, our focus of attention. That's why I teach juggling at some of my weekend workshops. It's an effective form of meditation, a respite from our busy minds, an instant mental vacation.

Thoughts do not stop arising during such moments of dynamic meditation, but we no longer pay homage to them; they lose their power to distract our attention, drive our moods, or weaken our resolve. During dynamic meditation, we liberate our bodies, for the moment, from the mind. Ultimately, everything we do becomes a dynamic meditation, and we're free from the monkey chatter of random thoughts.

Experience and Imagination

This description of a life-changing inner journey was another creation of my imagination, but it came from my life experience. I was not literally transported to another reality by Socrates.

As noted earlier, I used this literary device to transmit the teaching in a more visceral way, so understanding could become a sort of realization.

I created incidents, dreams, and visions to bring the messages home about how one naive, self-absorbed young man learned another way of living. And I invited my readers on the adventure, so that my teacher could become theirs.

The Dream of a Lifetime

This vision of my childhood, and the empty future I might have lived, provided a sharp impetus for me to persist in this frustrating, confusing path made difficult only through my resistance. That alternate destiny in my dream-vision represented usual, self-focused life - looking for love, happiness, and satisfaction through self-gratification, physical pleasures, disposable entertainment and distractions, and anesthesia poured from a bottle.

To swim across a pond, we have to leave one shore to reach another. Socrates showed me that other shore. Until I reached a point of disillusionment with my future, I would not willingly release the consolations of conventional life and venture into the unknown. That disturbing dream of an empty life served as a wake-up call.

Changing the Past, Changing the Future

When I told Socrates about my dark dream-vision (suspecting that he might already be aware of it), I asked him if that vision foretold my destiny. He reminded me that the only way we can "change our past" is to change our behavior in the present, because the present will soon become our past. We also shape our future by the actions we take right now.

Now is the warrior's moment, and this is a warrior's realization: No matter what we're thinking or feeling - whether we're sad or motivated, shy or assertive, confident or full of doubt - the quality of our lives will always depend, in large part, on what we do today. Today is the doorway to the future; today we build the foundation for what follows.

No Turning Back

My words and wishes in this passage reflect what so many have felt before (or after) making a leap of awareness that seems to distance us from friends or loved ones still living the usual life of sleeping and dreaming and doing what is expected.

Popular culture and film sometimes depict this pull between faux reality and the real thing: The Matrix series offers a meta-phor depicting the worlds of dreaming and waking up, dramatizing this difference between living in denial and recognizing reality as it is.

Given what I've written, it's easy to conclude that I am disparaging the ordinary conventions of life. This is not the case. Today's politics reflect humanity's current state of awareness and evolution - the best we can do for now. Socrates never told me to reject the conventional activities of life but rather encouraged me to move beyond the conventional mind - to realize that there's far more to life than the usual distractions and temporary diversions.

Currently, my personal appearance, clothing, and behaviors appear to be quite conventional. Joy and I live in a suburban home in Northern California with a white picket fence and two cars (although quite old ones at present). We don't live in an ashram or a commune or seclude ourselves in the mountains.

But our values, priorities, and sensibilities are likely different from those of many of our neighbors. It's nothing special - nothing that stands out or sets us apart from the stream of humanity. Just a certain awareness, a lightness, an orientation toward service, and an expanded perspective born of inner work and life experience. And perhaps we display a little less fear, less worry, less resistance. We live in the same world, yet we perceive reality in a slightly different way, even as we pay the bills, mow the lawn, do the laundry. We live as Socrates did - conventional lives, with unconventional perspectives.

© 2007, Dan Millman, All Rights Reserved

From the book Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior. Copyright © 2007 by Dan Millman. Reprinted with permission of H J Kramer/ New World Library, Novato, CA. www.newworldlibrary.com.